When hairy can be scary
By Stella Aslibekian, Health Columnist

Stanford Daily
May 5 2005

The issue of body hair had never concerned me much until one memorable
Saturday morning at the Fitness First gym in downtown Washington,
D.C. Feeling a little under the weather after a night’s very happy hour
at my summer job, I attempted to make up for my unhealthy behavior
with a sacrifice to the exercise gods. As I lethargically pushed the
pedals of the elliptical trainer, I looked around the room, trying
to figure out if the other gym visitors were guilty masochists like
me or healthy people committed to regular exercise.

It was then that I caught a glimpse of possibly one of the hairiest
creatures in the metropolitan D.C. area. This guy was engulfed in
thick reddish bristle from the neck down — it was everywhere but
his head. All of his body hair was glistening with sweat, which
didn’t drip down to the floor as the laws of gravity suggest, but
accumulated in each of the curls on his chest and back. It was a sight
to remember. As much as I tried to remain calm and nonjudgmental, my
hung-over self could not take much more. For the rest of my workout,
I deliberately stared in the other direction, wondering how much the
prissy hair salon in Dupont would charge to wax a beast like that.

Mind you, I am usually a lot more tolerant of body hair for several
reasons: first, I happen to be of Armenian descent, which means that
most of the people in my family are very hairy and some even have
unibrows; second, I have lived in Europe, which is notorious for
people sporting body hair au naturel; and third, I consider myself
a liberal, feminist, even pseudo-hippie human being who appreciates
human bodies the way they are. That guy in the gym, however, made me
seriously reconsider my stances on this issue.

Even Hollywood, the land of Brazilian waxes and unattainably artificial
beauty, cannot seem to come to a conclusion on body hair. A couple of
years ago, Julia Roberts exposed her fully grown armpit hair in front
of the camera during the Notting Hill premiere, provoking a lot of
discussion among fashionistas and feminists alike. Was it a political
statement or was Julia just too lazy to call an esthetician? Or was
it perhaps a requirement for her role in a new movie? Or was she
starting a new fashion trend?

To the disappointment of the body hair activists, Julia Roberts’
choice turned out to be not much of a statement but rather a matter
of personal preference, her movie characters remained feminine (and
presumably waxed), and the trend has failed to captivate Tinseltown
and the rest of the country. Women and metrosexual men everywhere
continue to endure the pain of waxing, while most guys (including my
friend at Fitness First) don’t stress about their body hair at all.
And both camps seem to be perfectly content.

Getting rid of body hair could be a costly enterprise — most waxing
salons in the Palo Alto area charge no less than $50 for a leg wax
and $75 for (ouch!) a Brazilian bikini wax. The procedure has to be
repeated approximately every month, so you do the math. To a large
extent, cost is the reason why most people I know at Stanford prefer
the old-fashioned shaving method, which requires more maintenance work,
but is much cheaper than the salon treatments.

The bottom line is that the “to wax or not to wax” decision
should remain a matter of personal preference for men, women or
Hollywood celebrities. Just, you know, use deodorant and keep things
aesthetically pleasing — especially if you like working out on
Saturday mornings.

@@line:Stella Aslibekian is a junior majoring in Human Biology.